A while back someone pointed out the website of Susan Shannon, a jewelry designer in the Seattle Area, who writes under the name Shortlittlerebel. She is a faux Conservative with views that many find intolerant, bigoted, ignorant, racist, and even insane. This is all hardly unusual, these types plague the internet, but Ms. Shannon has a certain flair for the melodramatic and excessively offensive. What was interesting about Susan Shannon was her backstory, which is extremely convoluted and likely largely fabricated. She claimed to have attended West Point. She did not graduate, she left before graduating. She claimed to have been a business consultant. She claimed to have had a DBA. And so on…

A while back, she also claimed she was sexually assaulted while at West Point, and she named a specific individual. Naturally this is a significant charge. The individual in question was up for a promotion to Brigadier General, a rising star as it were. Apparently he did not get promoted, and is now suing Ms. Shannon for her accusation, which he claims is unfounded and a defamation of character, I believe. I also believe Ms. Shannon is going to lose, and lose badly, and I am not sure she knows it. This is a difficult situation, victims of sexual assault deserve justice. The accused deserve due process as well, however. In many cases even the accusation of sexual impropriety is enough to serve as guilt, which is unfortunate for those who are innocent, but it is the severity of the charge that makes the reaction relatively understandable.

Unfortunately for Ms. Shannon, her whole line of defense seems to rest on her departure from West Point, and is problematic on several fronts. With any sexual assault it is difficult to discern fact from fiction, most cases are “he-said/she-said”. Nevertheless, with Ms. Shannon, it is the rest of her story that does not add up, her entire life seems a convoluted lie. Nothing she says seems to make sense, and I suspect she will have to pay significantly for her comments about her case, independent of the guilt or innocence of her accuser. I have done some research on this and I am trying to weigh the case in my mind.

First off, Ms. Shannon does not seem to be a stable or truthful individual. Nothing in her copious commentary on life, the universe, and everything make the slightest amount of sense. For background, I went to a Service Academy, and I know more than a little about how they operate. This is important, because a lot of what Ms. Shannon says would be incomprehensible to a member of the Academy family, but to the uninitiated (literally) it may have credence, which she may think bolsters her case, but really does not. I know of cases where someone was assaulted, and cases where an assault was claimed falsely to avoid punitive action (two people caught having sex on Academy grounds and then the woman claimed assault once caught. The fact that the woman told her friends she was going off to have sex immediately prior and had been planning it for some time… makes the claim dubious).

For background, Ms. Shannon starts by stating that she left West Point immediately prior to her senior year. This is an odd time to leave, as it can carry financial burden or service in the Enlisted ranks per contract, but not always as will be discussed. She had completed three years of schooling, and was under contract. She states that she took three days to out-process. Once out, she apparently continued her schooling at Stony Brook University on Long Island. She then proceeded to Germany where she did extensive management consulting with a DBA if her LinkedIn account is believed. She at some point married, moved to Seattle, and settled down to make jewelry for the local Farmer’s Market. This is her autobiography. It all comes from her self identification, and it is really odd.

Unfortunately, her time at West Point is very problematic. She has stated over and over that she gave up a medical career to leave West Point. This is seen in such statements as…

Looking at this from the POV of her accuser’s attorney, this is a very bad statement from Ms. Shannon, and very good for the plaintiff. First, getting selected by the military to attend medical school from the academy is VERY difficult. Out of 1000 graduates, usually no more than 10-20 go to medical school, mostly on the 10 side of that spectrum. I cannot remember exactly how many people went to medical school after graduation in my class, but I believe it was only eight or nine, at most. You have to have excellent grades and significant medical potential.

Ms. Shannon does not seem to have had this potential, or grades. Her grades were, by her own admission, bad. And there is circumstantial evidence that they were very bad. She left West Point, one of the most exclusive and academically demanding schools in the US, and attended a mediocre school by comparison, not necessarily terrible, but nowhere in the same league as West Point. Had she been academically astute, she could have gone to a very good school, likely on scholarship. Most West Pointers I know/knew who left could have gone on to Ivy League schools, or somewhere similarly demanding (Chicago for example), and found them actually easier than the Academies. Ms. Shannon went to an OK regional school, but not an exceptional national one. And she took four years (or 14, her statements are not clear) to graduate. This makes no sense either. She was a Senior, she had three years under her belt. At a minimum, she could have transferred credits for Freshman and Sophomore 100/200 level courses to dive directly into her new major. The Academies have a lot of Military Science classes and other specific requirements that tend to amusingly flabbergast admissions officials from other universities (hand to hand combat for one), but some classes should have transferred. The very real possibility exists that her grades, poor by her own admission, did not allow them to be transferred. This raises some questions about her academic career. These academic problems will likely be exploited by the plaintiff’s lawyer, and Ms. Shannon should be asked to explain her public comments about the loss of her medical career, which never existed in the first place.

I have to confess that I also consider Ms. Shannon a poorly educated individual from the onset, and somewhat lacking in certain mental capacities, which may color my commentary. As will be discussed later, she has conflicts with just about everyone, including her local schools, and she frequently refers to her local principal as the “principle” unaware of the homophone. She referred to the opposing counsel in the lawsuit against her as the “council” making a similar mistake. She displays a terrible knowledge of history, religion, politics, or any other subject. So this may contribute to considering her academic record is poor, but the evidence seems to play out to support her poor intellectual standing.

If I were the plaintiff’s attorney I would start with Ms. Shannon’s academic record. It is undoubtedly poor, and as such, how could she possibly claim to have had any chance at a medical career? She blamed her poor academic standing on her roommate’s sexual misconduct, which she apparently reported and was shunned for the betrayal. Cadets have a sense of loyalty and Ms. Shannon apparently breached it. Coupled with her poor academic record, as well as poor performance reports from senior officers, there would be little reason for her to stay at West Point. This would seem like ample reason to leave, none of which had to result from a sexual assault. This does not mean it did not happen, but there was a LOT showing how she was a poor cadet in any case.

There is the also the matter of her quick dismissal. Ms. Shannon believes that her quick separation from the Army is evidence that they suspected there was something wrong and they did not ask for either money or service on separating because there was something suspicious with her case. This is pretty much untrue. When you leave an academy after your Junior year starts, you are obligated. This is a “go/no-go” point for many, and the threat of leaving is that you have to either pay (A LOT) or serve. But there is a little known caveat that no one really talks about. Let’s say someone leaves, but they are just a terrible case, a soup sandwich if you will. The military could tell them to pay, but if they want to serve instead? The military has no desire to have someone like that in the ranks, so…. In these cases it is not unheard of to let the person quietly slip away into obscurity. I know a few first-hand accounts of this happening. Again, by Ms. Shannon’s own admission, this is what she was, a terrible cadet with no real benefit to the Army. She had poor evaluations from her senior officers, and they considered her a mediocre at best. She has several personality conflicts (foreshadowing the personality conflicts she would have with everyone else in her future life). This is public record, and Ms. Shannon should not really beg it into the record, but her claims that she was run out ignore the poor performance she had. This is only part of the problem, however.

Post Stony Brook, or during (her LinkedIn account says she took 14 years to graduate but I think she should have put 1990 instead of 2000), she claimed to have done significant consulting in Germany. This is really sketchy. For one, one of the companies she referenced went out of business while she was consulting, and I really question how someone who left West Point, attended a mediocre Long Island school, would then go on to do major consulting. Then there is the odd DBA in her profile. In the business world, this is a Doctorate in Business Administration. If Ms. Shannon claims a DBA, it would be interesting. She may have a diploma mill degree, she may not have one at all. Maybe she is implying the degree, but it stands for something else? In any case, the claims of major consulting are incredibly fishy, and if investigated I think she would not like the results be made public. Perhaps she did engage is significant consulting, but if it is true, the plaintiff’s attorney could simply ignore it, if it is a lie, this is one more piece of evidence that Ms. Shannon is a compulsive liar who makes things up all of the time. The benefit to this is entirely with the plaintiff’s attorney, with no advantage to Ms. Shannon at all. These sort of one-sided circumstances pop up all over her case, which makes it very weak.

But there is more. Over the course of her life, almost everything Ms. Shannon does or says is based around being as extremely controversial as possible. She actually courts controversy, and does so in a manner that is as absurd as it is public. She made a furor by stating that the government orchestrated the Newtown massacre, going as far as to impugn the families of the murdered children as complicit in the plot. She also claimed that “they are deleting my search results to kill my publicity”. She actively WANTS publicity. She DEMANDS it. She has been engaged in public fights with her local school, her children’s teachers, her own pastor, and various other figures. She has at times made offensive comments about Muslims, Catholics, other Protestants, Mormons, Jews, all non-Christians, Blacks, Hispanics, Democrats, Moderate Republicans, homosexuals, and just about anyone who is not her. The jury pool available to her that would tolerate her prejudices likely is a room of one. All of this only adds to the problems she faces. Someone who craves and demands publicity as she so publicly does….? This individual is not well positioned to defend herself on charges that she lied about an assault. The jury pool, which has to include some of these members or members who have friends or family who fit into this category…?

It would also be easy to introduce this evidence into the case. Normally, the fact that a defendant is wildly prejudiced might not have any basis in the argument at hand. But if the plaintiff’s lawyer is good, his entire case should be that Ms. Shannon is a nut-job, and makes all sorts of crazy claims. He then can use all of the bigoted, prejudiced, inane, false, and silly things she has said, of any sort. He could reference her Bible studies and bring in a professor of theology to show that Ms. Shannon has a barely functional understanding of Christian theology. Why would someone so uneducated on theological issues set themselves up as an authority? Because she craves attention. He could reference her comments about how the Pope is Satanic, and all of the Catholic members of the jury are gone. Mention her bigoted or racist comments, Hispanics and Blacks are gone. And so on…

None of this is hard. Consider the comment that Ms. Shannon made about Muslims…

This is decidedly odd, since the Ottoman Empire was not actually Arab. It was Turkish. The fact that the current country is called Turkey might demonstrate this. Another…

“ALSO, the Ottoman empire (what was left of it), then allied itself with GERMANY in WWI- remember those guys?”

This is true, the Turks did align themselves with the Germans, but the Arabs allied themselves with the British (Lawrence of Arabia, it was a very good movie, she should know something about that). Or…

“Other Arab Muslims- called the Young Turks. From Turkey.”

Turks are not Arabs. Young Turks were not Arabs…they were young Turks. Simple history.

This is one reason I think Ms. Shannon is poorly educated, she does not even bother to learn what would be readily available on Wikipedia before speaking, but this only puts nails in her coffin. She does not care whether or not what she says is even true before saying it…she just says things. And does this bode well for her accusations of sexual assault? Not really.

And then there is the assault itself. On her own blog she bragged that she was not cooperating with the investigation at all, an odd decision. If her accused is now suing her, the Army likely concluded that the evidence was either inconclusive (and accused are innocent until proven guilty) or unsubstantiated. The Plaintiff will likely provide a parade of character references, superb performance evaluations, and lines of people testifying that he is an exemplary military officer. Ms. Shannon, on the other hand, has to face a list of people she hates, completely absurd and extreme things she has said, blatantly false accusations she has made in the past, and a list of people who she has offended with her antics. As a cadet she had “personality conflicts” with others. As an adult, is there any question this tendency continued? All of this should be brought out, if the Plaintiff’s counsel is any good, to show how Ms. Shannon is a reckless individual who makes wild accusations at the drop of a hat, and cannot be considered reliable at all.

And if you note, none of this has anything to do with the actual reality of what happened to her. It is possible she may have been assaulted. This may have happened, but her case is so hurt by the melodrama that is this woman’s public persona, that it is almost impossible to believe her. If the Plaintiff focuses on the absurdity of Ms. Shannon’s claims, he can completely discredit her without addressing the claims at all (which have no real evidence other than the accusation to begin with). Normally this would backfire in these cases, attacking the victim is never advisable, but Ms. Shannon has made such a spectacle of herself it is almost impossible to divorce her melodrama from the accusation. And when there is no evidence that the attack occurred, or that it did not, there is a tendency to side with the alleged victim because of the heinous nature of the attack, but the weight of evidence of extreme, exaggerated, or outright bizarre things Ms. Shannon has said, the claim becomes drowned out by the high probability that she is doing little more than attention seeking for her own melodramatic ends.

Ms. Shannon’s best defense is to turn this melodrama to her side by admitting she is absolutely batty. Were she to admit that she is more than a little crazy, and not responsible for her claims, she would likely be believed. This has all of the benefits of seeming true. Something is wrong with Ms. Shannon, she acts like an insane woman, and being sexually assaulted could do that to a person. She could parade out the lists of untruths, bizarre acts, continual conflicts with others, and absurd accusations as evidence of her continued trauma. Such a defense would be highly plausible, but it would require Ms. Shannon to admit that everything from her opinions to her statements are abundantly absurd, and I do not think she would ever do this.

In the end, I am not really sure what happened. I think there is some possibility she was attacked, but her case has been so damaged by Ms. Shannon herself that she is likely going to lose everything.

Apparently I am Chinese and living in California. I have been accused of a number of things, but being Chinese is certainly not one of them, at least, not until now. I could have raked in the scholarship money had I known!!! I have also been accused of being a Sociologist, one subject in which I have no background at all really. Oh well, people have to have something to accuse one of, I suppose, and it could be worse.

So a weird article is making rounds by a former Yale professor discussing the failures in an “Elite” education. The article is old, but has popped up again, recently. It is a combination of sort of ok criticism, and really, almost painfully, vapid commentary. The author is William Deresiewicz, a former professor at Yale.

The author is a product of an ivy league education. He had an epiphany of sorts when a plumber walked into his home and the professor was shocked to find out that he had nothing in common with a blue-collar plumber, apparently from near Boston. This was confusing to me. For one, this should hardly shock anyone, but it did the author. I also doubt that he had/has much in common with a migrant worker in Georgia, with a truck driver in North Dakota, with a doctor in Anchorage, or any number of different people around the country, let alone the globe. The problem is that the author did not feel prepared for the interaction by college, and this is somehow the fault of the college.

The author is 100% correct, he was not prepared for this interaction, but he phrases this as a negative, which makes little sense. He states “The first disadvantage of an elite education, as I learned in my kitchen that day, is that it makes you incapable of talking to people who aren’t like you”. Again, this is true, but this applies to most things. I have a military education, at least one part of my education is military, and it prepared me for a lot, and it was, by all accounts, quite odd. It did not prepare me to interact with a LOT of people, but I am not sure it was ever supposed to do that. The point of education is NOT to allow you to discuss the nuances of life with members of different social groups, at least I do not think it is. I never took a class on the social life of blue-collar workers in the Boston region. Such classes likely exist, but in the realm of sociology or psychology.

The author then goes on to state outright that he was taught to disdain such people. This is likely untrue, but likely exists in his mind. I have little doubt that the author was arrogant, but that is the product of any education. Most people are arrogant when they have a little learning. Eventually they learn they know little and learn a LOT more, and at that point they mellow.

The main failure occurs when the author states…

“One of the great errors of an elite education, then, is that it teaches you to think that measures of intelligence and academic achievement are measures of value in some moral or metaphysical sense. But they’re not. Graduates of elite schools are not more valuable than stupid people, or talentless people, or even lazy people. ”

This is interesting. The author is correct, there is nothing metaphysically different between these people. People have worth as people. But our entire society is based around the idea that people can and should better themselves through education and that climbing the social ladder is possible through these efforts. We praise these people, we extol their existence, we hold them up as paragons of virtue and all that is good in our society. When someone raises themselves by their bootstraps, we consider that evidence of the American Dream.

Where the author has a point is in the fact that the elite institutions are not necessarily complete meritocracies. Getting in to a Harvard or Yale is academically difficult, but it is more so if you come from limited means. As much as we may like to pretend that we in the USA live in a class mobile society, this is largely untrue. The best most can afford is the local state university, and more and more these are becoming pumps instead of filters, pumping out graduates who do not necessarily have a bad education, but a lackluster one.

Nevertheless, the elite schools, are elite for a reason. The education one can gain there, is exceptional. This is a discrimination, and it always will be, which is why we value it so highly. To quote the Quran, “Are those who know equal to those who do not know?”

The New Republic has an amusing article about the reading habits of some individuals who went to fight in Syria. The books they purchased immediately before going were “Islam for Dummies” and “The Koran for Dummies.” This should surprise no one, but I am guessing it will anyways. Knowledge of Islam is almost intentionally avoided at all costs by many who nevertheless want to comment on the Middle East and Islam. I asked a particularly belligerent poster on John Wiseman’s blog what he had read (John refused to answer) and he listed a lot of books. When I then asked where in those books he found support for his very negative opinions, he launched into a lot of profanity and anger, but no support. He finally did find a quote he thought supported him, but the author actually contradicted the poster’s opinion about a page and a half later, though the poster seemed unaware of this.

There was a Mormon apologist, who eventually left the Church, who used to do much of the same. He knew nothing about Islam, or much else for that matter, but would pick quotes from anti-Islamic websites without any real understanding of what he was arguing or reading. Why he never really picked up some books, I will never understand, but this sort of negligent opinion supporting is common with Islam. No one seems to understand that serious study is necessary, people think opinions are rights and not something to be earned.

There is a great article up on Politico that discusses the recent failures of the Tea Party in Senate races. The real viability of politics is in major races. House races are not as indicative of anything, since the gerrymandering is so significant. Senate races, these involve a lot more people; as do Gubernatorial races and Presidential races.

The Tea Party is dying.

Part of this is the GOP reasserting itself, part is that people are tired of hearing the Tea Party. What is interesting about it is the response from the far-right. At no point does the concept that the candidates or ideology did not appeal even seem to occur to any of the Tea Party pundits. You get wacky conspiracy theories. Rigged elections. Voter fraud. Any number of equally inane answers instead of the simple fact that increasingly, no one likes the Tea Party. They are were and are a cancer on the Republicans, but they do not seem to know it.

I fell in love with the Middle East well before 9/11. The region was exotic and beautiful and interesting in ways that were new and exciting. I started reading about the region, culture, history, and religions while an undergrad and continued in an amateur status for some time. The Middle East is not what one would expect, it is not evil, not terrible, and not bad. It is exactly that one makes of it, however, and if one looks for evil, they will find it. Oddly enough the same can be said of any society, American included.

After September 11th, things got bad. Most people knew nothing about Islam, or the Middle East and reacted with prejudice and anger. Shortly thereafter I moved to the Middle East to live, work, and study. It was a transformative experience for my entire family. We have friends who are Muslim, Middle Eastern Christians, Jews, and a range of different people and cultures. It was enlightening.

In the US, however, little changed. This is not because of lack of resources. Good, really good, academic writing has come out since then, Muslim thinkers are engaging the hard questions, and there is something of a renaissance in Muslim thinking that is going on. I thought that for sure there would be a surge in learning about the Middle East and Muslims, and prejudice would gradually give way to understanding and tolerance. I was optimistic. I was wrong.

Opinions of Muslims is continuing to drop, real research is being ignored, and those wonderful, really good academic books, they sit on a shelf, unread and collecting dust. It is sad.

Recently a spate of “Conservative” bloggers decided to come here and try to embarrass a liberal. I am not that liberal, truth told. As RainOfLead said, “I’ll give him a bit to see how often he checks then start poking him with a sharp pointy stick” and he did so by trying to engage subjects he knew nothing about.

He brought up “creeping sharia” and referenced a website dedicated to showing how Sharia was invading US courts. I picked a case at random, it contained nothing of the sort, and I asked him to show where the creep was, specifically. He stopped talking about it.

He then went on to demonstrate absolutely no comprehension of anything related to the subject matters at all. He showed no education, and no understanding, but also no lack of strident opinions completely uninformed by anything resembling facts or comprehension. It was and is something to behold, but I have to wonder if he really learned anything from it. My opinions are not bulletproof by any stretch of the imagination. Some of the things I said could be challenged, and have been, so I am not claiming superiority or even expertise.

But I do study. And he has not. And he probably will not. I doubt he ever will.